A Year in Reading: Nick Dybek

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I put off reading Pat Barker’sRegeneration trilogy for a long time, even though I loved the first book in the series when I encountered it in my early 20s, even though I began researching World War I for a writing project of my own three years ago. I suspected that the trilogy would be very good, and, sometimes, very good books make me nervous. Usually I feel all of the things one should: invigorated, my faith in literature (and even life!) restored to such a degree that all of the frustrations of fiction writing feel worth it. But there are also times when a book is too good, when I begin think, what’s the point? No matter how hard I work I’ll never be able to do this.

Regeneration tells the story of Dr. W.H. Rivers and the shell-shocked officers he treats during World War I; some of these patients are historical figures like Rivers himself (Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen among them), others, like the series’s second protagonist, Billy Prior, are invented. The two subsequent novels, The Eye in The Door and the Booker-prize-winning The Ghost Road, follow Rivers and Prior through the slums of Manchester, the wards of military hospitals, the Ministry of Munitions, the South Seas, and eventually back to the Front, all while investigating questions of class, loyalty, platonic and erotic love between men, the ethics of pacifism, sanity, and western notions of death. Yeah, This is a lot to chew on, but the novels never feel overwhelming or artificial because Rivers and Prior are both so deeply human. Like the books they inhabit, these characters are empathetic but never sentimental, inquisitive but never didactic.

Which is all to say that Regeneration was every bit as good as I remembered, and the following two books were even better than I’d hoped and feared. Barker’s prose is sharp and precise, her dialogue natural and often slyly funny. She incorporates an astonishing breadth of historical detail into her story in a manner that feels measured and effortless and devastatingly real. And then after 600 pages of moving but restrained third-person narration, Barker gives herself permission to leap into the voice of Billy Prior (via his journal), who writes the following after a horrific day on the front line:

And I stumbled along at the head of the company and I waited for the sun to go down. And the sodden thing didn’t. IT ROSE. It wasn’t just me. I looked on every face. We hadn’t slept for four days. Tiredness like that is another world just like the noise, the noise of bombardment, isn’t like other noise. You see people wade through it, lean into it. I honestly think if the war went on for a hundred years another language would evolve, one that was capable of describing the sound of the bombardment or the buzzing of flies on a hot August day on the Somme. There are no words. There are no words for what I felt when I saw the setting sun rise.

At the end of a year, it's often hard to remember what I read in the preceding 12 months. This has to do with all the wine I've consumed throughout the seasons and the eggnog in which I'm probably swimming for the month of December, but also it has to do with sheer number of the books themselves. I write books. I'm managing editor of Bookslut. I read. A lot. But I'm often left yearning for something more in what I read. I want that kind of indelible experience I used to have with the books that meant something to me long ago -- the experience that, the older I get, the less likely I think I'm going to have. But I'm still a reader, so I never stop hoping I'll come across the book that's not just going to be one of my favorite novels of the year, but quite possibly one of my favorite novels of life. The book I bring to you at the end of 2013 is nothing if not indelible.
Long after reading it, it's still inconceivable to me just how good Tampa by Alissa Nutting is. Celeste Price is the kind of narrator whose words you want to keep on your skin forever. And she's one hell of a protagonist. She's brilliant. She's mad (or easily perceived that way). She's a physically attractive object to the point of paralyzing her onlookers. She's iconoclastic. She's funny. She's an allegory with a little red Corvette, which is probably itself a Northern Floridian metaphor. She's a teacher in the classroom, but she's not a didact for the reader. She's Nabokovian, and not simply because she bangs 14-year-olds. She lives on the page, and yet she's absolutely, utterly, impossibly real. I couldn't get her out of my mind after the first sentence.
Tampa really is a joyous and momentous occasion for prose. And yet, of course, some readers haven't understood it, have declaimed against it -- particularly those who haven't actually read it. A 26-year old teacher -- a female teacher, no less -- who takes up, unrepentantly, with a 14-year-old boy in her class? Say just that much, and you can already hear the murmurs: On purpose? Well, that's just terrible. End of story. Lock her up at once. Oh, she's a character in a novel? In that case, we'd better lock up the book. Because complacency shouldn't be riled! We're not supposed to write or read these sorts of things, and if a book does happen to emerge, we must eradicate it at once (by way of repudiation, of course, of course, because free speech, etc.). Critical thought and analysis is reserved for the nice books, the polite books, the books that know their places. As far as the outliers go, we're supposed to vilify, never empathize. At least that's how the mass media would have it.
I say, bullshit! Hasn't it always been the case that art is supposed to make you question your assumptions? And radically so? And really good art takes all of your assumptions away and reinvents you? That’s what Tampa does.
The problem people have with Tampa has nothing to do with the novel, its author, or its characters. The problem people have with this book comes from within. They're afraid of themselves. Reading a novel like Tampa pretty much forces you to scrutinize the world -- and yourself. True art reminds us of us -- of what's right with us and also what's wrong. And we need it to.
If I could have just one wish this Christmas, it would be for you to read Tampa. But only if you think you're ready. And I think you are. You're tired of slogging through the kinds of books that leave faint impressions on you before quickly and permanently disappearing. If you're lucky, and you let yourself, Tampa might just change your (reading) life.
More from A Year in Reading 2013Don't miss:A Year in Reading 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005The good stuff:The Millions' Notable articlesThe motherlode:The Millions' Books and ReviewsLike what you see?Learn about 5 insanely easy ways to Support The Millions, and follow The Millions on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.

I asked Sam at Golden Rule Jones for the "best" book he read all year, and he came back with a literary biography that many were talking about this year (Scott, Bookish, Moorish)I don't know about "best," but the funniest, saddest, most interesting, and most (oddly) inspiring book I read this year was Jonathan Coe's Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B. S. Johnson. Johnson wrote seven extraordinary novels between 1962 and his suicide in 1972. Coe, a novelist himself, tells the story of Johnson's life through 160 "fragments" from Johnson's own writings. For all his flaws, Johnson's energy, humor, and passion come blazing through. I loved this book.

Dan Kois edits Vulture, New York magazine's arts and culture blog.Like many people who work in publishing, feed off of publishing, or report on publishing, I'm constantly reading months or even years ahead. So my 2007 reading experience was unlike that of many of your correspondents; rarely could I find time to dip into the past. When I did, it was to re-read works that had given me great pleasure: the funny and sad novels of Tom Drury, for a profile I still swear to God I will eventually write; Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, in preparation for the final volume of the former and the film of the latter. I read comics systematically and comprehensively this year for the first time, and loved dozens and dozens of them, sometimes feeling like a reading cheater in my ability to rip through an entire satisfying story in an hour or less. But the best book I read all this year is a book that isn't even coming out until next year: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, a thriller set in the darkest days of Stalinist Russia, one of the finest intersections of historical setting and propulsive plot I've read in a long time. It's a book that transcends the serial killer genre and becomes a difficult, complicated work of art in its own right.More from A Year in Reading 2007

“Why do we read?” That was the journal prompt given one day to seniors at the International High School at Prospect Heights, a Brooklyn public school that teaches English to newly arrived immigrants and refugees from around the world. I spent a year at the school reporting my first book, The New Kids. During that time I heard many, many journal prompts, but this one made a lasting impression, in part because of one student’s answer. “We read to survive in the world,” wrote Hasanatu, who had grown up in Sierra Leone during the war, “because when we know how to read, we can have gob.”
Hasanatu had learned how to read only recently, around the same time that she learned how to write. Sometimes she read for fun — she liked Superfudge by Judy Blume — but reading had a more practical purpose, too. She read to learn English, to sharpen her language and communication skills, to propel her forward toward college, and, yes, toward a good job. She also read to find answers to pressing questions. For instance, she wanted to know why it seemed that only African Muslims practice female circumcision? She spent days in the library investigating.
For me, the question “What are you reading” inevitably leads to the question, “Why do we read?” This year, I’ve been reading mostly for entertainment and escape — more like I used to read as a kid. In past years, I’ve found myself reading books on a theme, usually related to whatever I’m working on at the moment. Before writing The New Kids, I read and revisited books about the immigrant/outsider experience: What Is the What and Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, Outcasts United by Warren St. John, and Call It Sleep by Henry Roth. (I wrote about a few of those books here.)
If I had known about The Gangster We Are All Looking For, Lê Thi Diem Thúy’s slim and elegant novel about a young girl who washes ashore in San Diego after fleeing Vietnam with her father by boat, I would have read it before writing my own book. In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t know about it — I was able to read it without taking endless mental notes. I was pleased to discover that the author has a connection to western Massachusetts (where I recently moved with my husband), also home to Tracy Kidder, whose book Home Town gave me a glimpse into the inner workings of Northampton.
Leaving New York City helped rekindle my interest in books about my former home, which I sometimes miss. I loved Jennifer Egan’sA Visit From the Goon Squad, not just for its memorable characters and pervasive sense of nostalgia, but for Egan’s wonderful inventiveness with language. I also ate up Amy Sohn’s bitchy Prospect Park West — especially the parts where she imagines dialogue for the “character” of Maggie Gyllenhaal, who works at the Park Slope Food Coop.
On the subject of Park Slope, I finally got to read the works of some of my friends from the neighborhood’s own Brooklyn Writers Space. Tamar Adler’sAn Everlasting Meal is a cookbook written as a collection of pithy essays, in the tradition of M.F.K. Fisher’sHow to Cook a Wolf. Bryan Charles’ memoir, There’s a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From, is about his first few years living in New York City, where he worked in a cubicle on the seventieth floor of the World Trade Center up until and on the day of 9/11. Michael Chabon described the book as “a sneakily disturbing, disarmingly profound, casually devastating memoir, taut and adept, that cracked me up even at its saddest moments.” I think he nailed it.
Speaking of Chabon, I finally read Wonder Boys, which has one of the best last lines of any book that I can remember. I also read Emma Donoghue’sRoom, which ruined a recent family weekend vacation (I wouldn’t talk to anyone until I finished), and Ransom Riggs’Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, another creepy book. This one is a young-adult novel — featuring some beautifully haunting vintage photos — about an abandoned orphanage filled with some very weird kids.
Last but not least, I revisited a few old favorites, including Larry McMurtry’sLonesome Dove, the first western I ever read, and Black Hole, the first graphic novel I ever read. The former is an epic adventure about a couple of aging Texas cowboys who embark on a perilous journey to settle amid the wilderness of Montana. The latter is a grotesque modern fable about a bunch of teenagers in 1970s Seattle, where a sexually transmitted “bug” is causing some horrific mutations among the locals.
Two titles you wouldn’t find side-by-side on most bookshelves, but I see a connection. As Hasanatu said, we read to survive in the world, but sometimes we just like reading about survival.
More from A Year in Reading 2011Don't miss:A Year in Reading 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005The good stuff:The Millions' Notable articlesThe motherlode:The Millions' Books and ReviewsLike what you see?Learn about 5 insanely easy ways to Support The Millions, The Millions on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.

Whew... Ok, I feel much better now. Well rested and ready to continue:Feeding a Yen by Calvin Trillin: It's not that I love all food writers or that I necessarily am enamored by all writing about food. I've just noticed these past few years that there are particular characteristics shared by a lot of food writers that attract me to them as writers. They are very knowledgeable but also self-effacing. They tend to be intrepid travelers with acquaintances on most continents who will gladly direct them to the finest cuisine in the area, and often times these writers, in order to fuel their pens, will receive the finest that these far-flung kitchens have to offer. Ideally, the reader will get an insider's view of a place, one that he will not be able to necessarily be able to replicate, but that he might strive for. An example, when I was in Barcelona this summer, stoked by the writing of Trillin and Jeffrey Steingarten and Jonathan Gold, I was probably most intrigued by the food of the place, a regional cuisine that isn't duplicated elsewhere. Though I might not end up at a four star spot nor be able to decipher the recipe for the grilled sardines or paella that I just ate, I can nonetheless follow in these writers' footsteps as I strive to learn about a place by looking for and at its food. And most of all I can follow in Trillin's footsteps as I seek out deliciousness in all its forms. There's something wonderful about devoting yourself to seeking out the joy comes from a good meal.The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten: Steingarten shares with Trillin a love for food, but beyond that they couldn't be more different. Trillin is folksy and innocent, while Steingarten is a brash, but hilarious, know-it-all who spends as much time writing about himself as he does about food. He puffs himself up and then lets out the air. Most often this occurs over the course of one of his kitchen experiments where he attempts to make the perfect french fry or the perfect fried chicken during which he makes an unholy mess, comes to no conclusion (which is all the more funny considering the certitude with which he undertook the venture), and fun is had by all. The Man Who Ate Everything, his first collection, is good, though a bit wearying by the end. I've read bits of It Must've Been Something I Ate, and it seems to be even better, since by this time he has really mastered his style.Yours, and Mine: Novella and Stories by Judith Rascoe and.....Last Courtesies and Other Stories by Ella Leffland: I was inspired by a couple of things to read these two books. First, I had the opportunity last summer to meet Edwin Frank, the editor of the NYRB press. We talked a lot about The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, of course, but we also talked about how he finds titles to bring back into print. Many are books that he has long been aware of, that he has watched go out of print, and then he has stepped in and reissued them, but there are other titles that he has found by trolling the sidewalk book tables in Manhattan looking for hidden gems, a name that sounds familiar or a title that sounds intriguing. At the time, I had recently finished the collection Prize Stories of the Seventies: From the O. Henry Awards, and I though that it might be interesting to track down the long out of print books by a couple of the writers whose stories I had enjoyed, but whose names were unfamiliar. Though the books themselves were quite good, I really enjoyed reading these as an exploration of the trajectory of the American short story. There is a sorrowful decadence to these stories, a feeling that the world might be unraveling before our eyes. Leffland and Rascoe certainly deserve their places in the O. Henry collection, and it's a shame that they cannot be more widely read today.The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen: In August, over the course of this post and this one there was a discussion here at The Millions about who currently holds the title of best young writer, and who, among those under 50, will still be read voraciously a generation or two from now. Many names were batted around, but the one book that everyone agreed upon was The Corrections. Due to my perhaps unfounded dislike of Franzen, I hadn't yet read the book, but inspired by the discussion, I immediately went out and read the book, was pretty dazzled by it, and wrote this post about it. I hope that The Millions can be host to more great discussions like this one in 2004.Well, it looks like there will be a part four. I promise I'll finish soon. Maybe even this afternoon!